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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. Minneapolis-based First Bank Systems' offer to buy First Interstate is the choice of the California-based bank's board of directors. The board has rejected a rival bid by Wells Fargo Bank, which is attempting a hostile takeover of First Interstate.

The Twin Cities airport will no longer inspect large vehicles as they enter public parking. The inspections have caused travelers to be delayed by as much as 30 minutes, but airport security coordinator Gordon Longton says people should count on delays anyway.

GORDON LONGTON: We still have our construction in place. We have restricted roadways. And so as usual, the Thanksgiving holiday week is notoriously one of the busiest weeks that any airport has across the country. So nothing has changed from that aspect.

KAREN BARTA: The FAA last month ordered airports nationwide to conduct the searches, but cited no specific threats. Longton says he assumes the FAA believes the possibility of danger has lessened. The FAA warns it could order inspections to be resumed at any time.

The Minnesota Corrections Department is considering renting available beds at the Washington County Jail in Stillwater to ease overcrowding at state prisons. Washington County officials say they have beds to spare for now.

The state forecast today includes a wind advisory for all but the northeast, windy and colder statewide. Occasional light snow in the north with light snow or flurries spreading over the south. Highs from the upper 20s in the northwest to 40 in the southeast. For the Twin Cities, cloudy, a morning high of 40. Around the region, it's mostly cloudy. In Duluth, it's 30 degrees. Rochester reporting 37. It's 32 in Saint Cloud and 39 in the Twin Cities. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

[CHEERFUL MUSIC]

PAULA SCHROEDER: This is Midmorning on the FM News station. It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. Good morning. I'm Paula Schroeder.

[GENTLE PIANO MELODY]

In the Northwoods of Minnesota, everybody knows the name Justine Kerfoot. Justine Kerfoot has lived deep in the woods outside Grand Marais longer than just about anybody. Today on Midmorning, on our series Voices of Minnesota, we hear from Justine Kerfoot. Her family bought the Gunflint Lodge nearly 70 years ago, and she's collected 70 years worth of stories-- the time she fell through the ice with her dog team, the time she lassoed a moose calf, the time her little son dropped a kitten down the outhouse. Those stories are collected in her books, Woman of the Boundary Waters and Gunflint.

Kerfoot came from a wealthy family in Illinois, and she told interviewer Catherine Winter she first saw the Northwoods when her mother bought the Gunflint Lodge in 1927.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: I told Mother-- she was helping to finance my college education, and so she wondered if I'd help her summers. And I said, well, sure, I'd be glad to help her summers. And she wanted me to have a picture of the area, so she hired a guide. And so the guide-- and I brought a girl up from college with me, and he took us on an overnight canoe trip. It was up the Granite River to Saganaga and back again. I learned a lot about camping.

Following that time, there was no moose season on the American side. The moose season was only open on the Canadian side. And Mother thought that maybe I should experience hunting for moose, and so she hired the same guide, and I got another girl from town to accompany me. And we went to his trapping shack for a week, and in that week, I saw 36 moose. And so I shot a moose, big deal, and hauled it all the way to Chicago, really.

CATHERINE WINTER: Good heavens.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: The meat and the head and so forth.

CATHERINE WINTER: At that time, you were a young woman.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: That's right.

CATHERINE WINTER: And you had spent all that time in and around the Chicago area, right?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: That's right.

CATHERINE WINTER: Had you ever done any of that--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: No.

CATHERINE WINTER: --hard, physical carrying of things?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: No. And it was, of course, the guide sort of played the situation up. He asked me if I didn't want to help clean the moose. And I said, oh, I was interested, and yeah, I would. And so he said, well, you just lift this leg up and roll it over on its back. Well, jeez, I got hold of the leg and lifted to beat hell, and I didn't even move it.

CATHERINE WINTER: (LAUGHING) Of course not.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Because it was real big, and it was heavy, several hundred pounds. And then I insisted upon taking everything out-- the legs and the head, the rack, the whole business. And he said, well, wouldn't you like to pack the rack out? And I said, yeah, gee, that would be real exciting. And so he loaded me up.

And when a moose goes through the woods their rack lies at an angle, and they lay their head back and it's just like a snowplow going through. They can go through the woods like you wouldn't believe it. It parted the way, and no trouble at all. But when you put a whole head on your shoulders and the rack and you start to carry, you tangle with everything that the Lord ever produced. And so by the time I got that down, I was much wiser on accepting big loads.

Then following that whole situation, Mother wanted a real nice resort, and so she hired carpenters to build additions onto both ends of the so-called store and make a big dining room and make a big lounge.

CATHERINE WINTER: Did you get a lot of guests at that time? How long did it take to get to the--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: No, it didn't. As fishermen, the word spreads rapidly. New area just opened up. Fish just biting like crazy. And you had no trouble. They came from as far away as Chicago, Minneapolis, Duluth. And they came in.

CATHERINE WINTER: How did they get there? Did they--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Drive. Our roads were-- the road came only as far as Gunflint, as our lodge. The clientele was fishermen that came in, and they often came in big buses like the bus that we have now. And the buses had one horrible time because as they followed the terrain, the ups and the downs, the bottom would want to scrape on the ups And so it was always a big hassle getting them in and getting them out.

CATHERINE WINTER: How did you learn to do the guiding that you ended up doing? How did you learn to carry canoes and what to pack and--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: At that time, there was nothing. On canoe outfitting, for instance, there was nothing but canned goods. The first thing that was developed, to my knowledge, was something called Knorr-- K-N-O-R-R-- soup.

CATHERINE WINTER: Oh, sure. They still make that. I still bring that camping.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah. And that was the one type of dehydrated foods that we had, and from that developed other dehydrated foods. Then it was a kind of contention among all of the operators to see how much lighter you could make your packs. And so it wasn't a case of holier-than-thou of us making a big move to keep the campsites free of cans and junk that was accumulated. It was just to have it lighter so that people could carry easier.

CATHERINE WINTER: How did you learn the basics? How to paddle a canoe and how to not get lost, that sort of thing.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Well, I did get lost.

[LAUGHTER]

It's a terrible situation, a terrible feeling, I tell you. But it was Fisher and Company from Eveleth that put out maps of that country. The only trails between lakes actually was made by the Indians originally, and by those that dealt in fur and so forth.

CATHERINE WINTER: The voyageurs.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: The voyageurs and the trappers. And it was always a benefit to the trappers, or they didn't want to let anybody know where they had gone. So they would land on bare rock and follow that bare rock as far as they could before they ever, you might say, started the portage.

So when you landed, you didn't know where the devil the portage was until you really hunted for it or got to know it. And Fisher then wrote to the resort, few people that were doing outfitting at that time, to upgrade their maps constantly. As soon as we'd find a portage, we'd tell them and then they'd mark it on the map. And then it became more usable.

CATHERINE WINTER: In I think 1929 it was, your family ended up losing both of its houses in Illinois.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah. My dad was a very heavy bank stockholder, and at that time, there was no government coverage. The responsibility was up to the stockholders. They had to sell their land and so forth to try to not have all of the customers at a total loss. My dad had a number of farms, and in our home, we lost the whole works. The only thing that we had left was up at Gunflint.

CATHERINE WINTER: So you had to move.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: So we had to move. That was our only home, so to speak. It was a big adjustment for my mother, because looking at that background at Barrington and what she had done, we moved up to the Gunflint Trail, where the only neighbors we had were Indians.

CATHERINE WINTER: Your mother had been kind of a society lady in some ways, hadn't she?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yes, kind of.

CATHERINE WINTER: And you too. I mean, you moved in relatively wealthy crowds.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: That's right.

CATHERINE WINTER: So what was that like? Were you--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Not meaning any snootiness or anything, but we had a cook. We had a maid always at our home. And it was simply a way of life at that-- certain people that had certain amount of money had that type of thing. And that's the way I was raised to start with, and then you're thrown to your own resources, and it was quite an adjustment also for me. But I'm sure not as much as for my mother.

So I lived through one winter, and I kept thinking, well, this Depression isn't going to last too long. And so next year, by that time I was doing graduate work. And I kept thinking, I did one year of graduate work and I had the second year to go.

CATHERINE WINTER: What were you studying?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: I was getting a background for-- hoping to get a background to go into medicine.

CATHERINE WINTER: Oh.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Which at that time was very difficult for women also, to be accepted in medical school. And so I specialized in-- I did graduate work in parasitology, which is like malaria and all that type of thing. And when I graduated, I graduated a major in zoology and a minor in chemistry, and a minor in philosophy. They don't let you jab it up quite that bad now. But that's the way it was then.

CATHERINE WINTER: So there you were on the end of the Gunflint Trail thinking, some day, the Depression will lift.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: I thought, well, next year things will break. And then the third year, yeah, I can still go back. Well, after five years, then you're so far behind science doesn't wait for you to catch up on something like that. You've got to be right in with it and advance as the technological changes are made. And finally I realized that I was way behind. I'd have to go and make it all up. And I thought, well, I'll give this a whack and see how far it goes.

And so I learned then to paddle a canoe fairly well all over the country. And I learned-- no, I didn't learn. I toughened into being able to carry a canoe. And I learned from the Indians, the easiest way to do it, the easiest and right way to paddle so that after a while you get strong enough, so you can do it. And you don't have much option. I mean, it was a case of survival. So I guided canoe parties. And I made a lot of portages, and the canoes didn't seem so heavy after a while.

CATHERINE WINTER: Well, I know at that time, it must have been very unusual for people to have a female guide. And I really thought it was funny when I read in the introduction to your first book, Les Blacklock tells a story of you taking a party out fishing and you came back late-- you ran into some weather and came back late-- and your mother scolded and scolded the men who had been with because you were pregnant.

And she said, what do you mean, keeping a pregnant woman out in this? And the men were so shocked, not because they didn't know you were pregnant, but because they didn't know you were a woman.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: That's right. I did. I ran into that.

CATHERINE WINTER: Did you mind that, being mistaken for a boy?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Well, you see, the whole picture changes when you get up in a place like that, when you operate a resort like that. There isn't such a thing as women do this and men do this. The men that were in that era, because they trapped and so forth, they could bake and cook-- not fancy, but good, plain food-- just as well as a woman could. And the women could paddle and carry just as well as a man could.

And so there wasn't that differentiation. It was simply a good guide, a bad guide, a good, responsible person, or somebody that's too lazy. That was the kind of division that was made, not man, woman kind of a thing.

CATHERINE WINTER: So you didn't run into people who--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: No.

CATHERINE WINTER: --who didn't want a female guide, or--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: No.

CATHERINE WINTER: How interesting

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It was, is she a good guide? Yes, she's a good guide. She knows the lake.

CATHERINE WINTER: So you didn't run into-- you talk to men now who want to have a male fishing trip. They just want to go out and be just guys for a week. It wasn't--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Well, they don't-- yeah, and there aren't as many now. There are very few women guides.

CATHERINE WINTER: So there were more years ago than there are now?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yes.

CATHERINE WINTER: Oh, really?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It didn't make any difference what the-- the whole thing was a very equal thing. When it came time to-- for instance, we had to saw wood, and the women were out sawing wood right along with the men. They went into the woods and sawed by hand for wood for the camp. They produced meals, and kids too, in between times. But nobody paid any attention to it because that was just the way the Indians did things too.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Justine Kerfoot, the author of the books Gunflint and Woman of the Boundary Waters, speaking with Catherine Winter. It's part of our series Voices of Minnesota. I'm Paula Schroeder, and this is Midmorning on the FM News station. It's 22 minutes past 10 o'clock.

In the weather, we're expecting brisk winds today with westerly winds at 20 to 35 miles per hour in the Twin Cities. And all around the region, except for the northeastern part of Minnesota, it's going to be colder as well, with highs from the upper 20s in the northwest to around 40 in the southeast. Temperatures holding steady in the mid-30s in the Twin Cities.

Well, Justine Kerfoot went on to marry one of the regular guests at the Gunflint Lodge. They raised three children in the woods. She still lives at the lodge, and her son Bruce has taken over management. In the second half of our interview, Justine Kerfoot talks about how different it is to live in the woods now than it was 70 years ago. Here's Catherine Winter.

CATHERINE WINTER: After you had lived at the Gunflint Lodge for a number of years, you must have been back financially on your feet again, so that there was a choice now of whether to stay or to go. What made you decide to stay?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It was home.

CATHERINE WINTER: It had become home?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It had become home. And it was a place that was-- oh, gee, you could breathe. You go to a city and holy smokes, you could stand in one house and spit into the next one, practically. That congestion, that tightness. Oh, I still can't stand it, hardly.

And so the woods is just a way of life now. And it's much easier because originally, in order to start a car in the wintertime, we had to build a fire under the car to get the thing going. And now, what the heck? You've got a headbolt heater, and you go plug it in, and in 20 minutes, you-- just like uptown. And so all of those things have changed, made life easier. And I don't know, it's home.

CATHERINE WINTER: You used to lack a lot of conveniences, didn't you? You didn't have electricity. You didn't have a reliable telephone line. You didn't have snowmobiles. You had to go by dogsled or snowshoe.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Snowshoe and then dog team and then snowmobile was the sequence on that.

CATHERINE WINTER: Now, you were instrumental, weren't you, in getting a phone line set up? But you used to have a pretty crude system, didn't you?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah, it was a crude system, but it worked.

CATHERINE WINTER: Well, you tell stories of having to patch that line with a tire chain, or--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah, I did.

[LAUGHTER]

Sometimes a moose would go through and the line would sag and get caught in the moose's horn. Well, that was just a slight-- what the heck did the moose give a darn? It didn't make any difference. He kept on going. Finally broke the line. And then you had to go and find the line and bring it back up onto the road, and hook it onto your car and take up as much slack as you could, and then slack on the other end. But you never came together. You were always three or four feet apart.

And one time, we couldn't-- our line was broken, we didn't know where. And I kept watching as I went to town, and I found the break. And I didn't have any-- we always carried spare wire, but I didn't happen to have any. But I had a set of chains, so I hooked the thing from chain one onto the other side, and it worked beautifully. We worked it for a whole week before we got a chance to refix it. And those were things that you learn to be ingenious.

And at every place on the Gunflint Trail at that time, we all had a junk pile. And if anything broke down it went to the junk pile, because there was always something that you could retrieve. And when you stopped and thought about it, we had a lousy road to Grand Marais and a tough road from there to Duluth, and Duluth was our only source. And so you did a heck of a lot of inventing and figuring out some way to make something work.

CATHERINE WINTER: Today, I know from my own experience that it's possible to just whiz right up to the Gunflint Lodge. The trail goes even farther and it's paved all the way, and--

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yes, that's right.

CATHERINE WINTER: --you can come in and have pistachio chicken and flip on a light and read. It's all the modern conveniences right there.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Each one was a big struggle.

CATHERINE WINTER: Has it been a good thing or a bad thing to have all those conveniences?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It's been a good thing.

CATHERINE WINTER: Yeah?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Gosh, you mean to have all those conveniences? Without it, you'd be out of business in five minutes.

CATHERINE WINTER: You do get a lot more people now, too, don't you, than you did years ago?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yes, there's no question about it.

CATHERINE WINTER: You know, it seems, too-- I noticed this when I went to the bookstore to look at your books, the section that has the Minnesota writers and the Northwoods writers just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It seems like everybody who goes to the Boundary Waters has to write a book about it.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah, it does seem like it. And a lot of them have different attitudes and different thoughts. And I can remember when I first started to carry canoes and pack out, that if somebody else came on the same lake I was on, oh, it was crowded as-- can you imagine anybody being that brass, to come when they've seen somebody is on that lake and they've-- now by 4 o'clock you better have a campsite or you might be out of luck.

CATHERINE WINTER: Are you 89 now? Is that right?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Coming up.

CATHERINE WINTER: Coming up on 89?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: In another month.

CATHERINE WINTER: Are you still out canoeing and snowshoeing and that sort of thing?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yes, but not quite as ambitious as I was before. I managed to bang myself up a little bit. And the last one, I was riding a bicycle in Florida, and I happened to get thrown and hit the shale, which dinged up this shoulder quite a bit. And I can't paddle quite as long as I used to. The canoes are getting heavier, and those things happen.

CATHERINE WINTER: But you're still carrying canoes?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Still carrying a lightweight canoe.

CATHERINE WINTER: Your son tells me that you finally stopped riding your motorcycle last year. Is that true?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah, they took it away from me. They thought I ought to sell it. They haven't got my snowmobile yet, though.

[LAUGHTER]

CATHERINE WINTER: One quote from your book is something like-- I don't have the exact quote, but something about, in order to live in the wilderness, a person has to be at peace with himself or herself.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: That's true.

CATHERINE WINTER: Is that so?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: You have to live with yourself, and you have to live with your neighbors. You have to depend on them, and they have to depend on you.

CATHERINE WINTER: Do you feel like you lived a life that people can't live anymore?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: It would be a different type of life, because it wouldn't be as-- now there are more things available that weren't then, so that you didn't have to do all this ingenious stuff that you had to do at that time.

CATHERINE WINTER: It's all been invented and marketed now, huh?

JUSTINE KERFOOT: Yeah, it's all been invented.

CATHERINE WINTER: Special camping stoves.

JUSTINE KERFOOT: And it was a case of-- so with an axe, you could do pretty near anything. You could make a paddle. You could build a log cabin. That's all it took was one axe and a little know-how. And now that's kind of passé.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Woodswoman and writer Justine Kerfoot from the Grand Marais area, talking with the FM News station's Catherine Winter. Our Voices of Minnesota series is heard every Monday at this time. The series is produced by Dan Olson with research assistance from intern Ellen Hatch.

[GENTLE MUSIC]

Time now is 10:30. Midmorning continues. We're going to hear about wine from the Flying Wine Man in the next half hour of Midmorning.

CHARLES BIEDERMAN: I became a loner because of my ambition to be an artist as a little boy, because everybody was against it.

SPEAKER 1: He lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, thinks art.

SPEAKER 2: I think he's very important for the history of American art, if not perhaps even for the history of world art.

SPEAKER 3: He's just got so little time. He feels so driven because he knows his time is limited.

SPEAKER 4: Charles Biederman-- An Artist in Exile, Friday at 5:30 on the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: We're going to get an update on the news now with Karen Barta. There's been a plane crash in California, Karen.

KAREN BARTA: Paula, at least one person is dead after a small plane smashed into an apartment building in Fullerton, California. Local police say the victim was in the single-engine plane that was trying to make an instrument landing in heavy fog. A fire is still burning in the building and three people are missing.

The Grand Canyon is open again after being shut down last week in the federal budget impasse. It was the first time the park had closed in its 76-year history.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average raced past the 5,000 milestone this morning. Investors and analysts are now watching to see just how high the market will go. Market analyst Steve Leuthold of the Leuthold Group of Minneapolis says the market is up because the public has come to believe you can't lose on the stock market. He expects a dramatic drop in the market.

STEVE LEUTHOLD: Whether we have, say, a recession beginning next year that might cause people to pause in terms of the stampede into stocks, I don't know. But we do know that in terms of valuation levels, this is a market that is unprecedented.

KAREN BARTA: Leuthold says it's so easy to shift sizable investments, such as retirement accounts, that the market is extremely flexible-- subject, he says, to major swings due to changes in public perceptions.

Unionized health care workers and University of Minnesota officials hold another mediation session today. The workers rejected the school's latest contract offer last week. They're employed by University of Minnesota Hospitals.

The state forecast today includes a wind advisory for all but the northeast, windy and colder. Occasional light snow in the north with light snow or flurries spreading over the south. Highs from the upper 20s in the northwest to 40 in the southeast. And for the Twin Cities, winds increasing with occasional light snow and a high near 40. It's mostly cloudy around the region. It's 32 degrees in Saint Cloud. Duluth is reporting 30. In Rochester, it's 37, and it's 39 in the Twin Cities. Paula, that's the news update from Minnesota Public Radio.

PAULA SCHROEDER: All right. Thank you, Karen. It's 27 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning on the FM News station. I'm Paula Schroeder. Well, with Thanksgiving coming up, the sale of wine is booming. The traditional advice is to serve white wine with poultry. But what kind of white? Perhaps a Beaujolais would do just as well. Well, before you run out to your local wine shop to get all the wine that you need for your holiday dinner, take a moment to listen to the advice of the Flying Wine Man, Andrew Jones, who's in our studios this morning.

He is a wine raconteur, a long-established BBC broadcaster, and advisor to the royal family. He's the man who put a California Cabernet Sauvignon in the wine cellar of Princess Diana's father after he asked if there were any good American wines. Well, for heaven's sakes, of course they are. Andrew Jones, welcome to Midmorning. And I have to tell you, he's brought along his portable bar, complete with wine bucket, and opening now a bottle of-- looks like Australian.

ANDREW JONES: (AUSTRALIAN ACCENT) Australian.

PAULA SCHROEDER: (AUSTRALIAN ACCENT) Yeah, Australian. [LAUGHS]

ANDREW JONES: Because I've brought you an example of why the Australians are doing such a wonderful job with value for money. Now, this is a good--

PAULA SCHROEDER: You don't have to convince me, I should tell you, because I'm a huge fan of Australian wine.

ANDREW JONES: Well, that's good to hear. This is a Lutheran wine, actually. I think you've got some Lutherans in this listening area.

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) Lutheran wine, yes.

ANDREW JONES: And when I say it's a Lutheran wine, after all, the majority of the vineyards of Europe came about because of the Christian church. The monasteries planted vines because they wanted wine for sacramental needs.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's where the Christian Brothers came from.

ANDREW JONES: Same principle, exactly. Also because they wanted an aid to digestion because they couldn't trust the water supplies, and apart from that if they made any surplus wines they could sell it off, and it would help support their livings. So that practice continued. But when the Lutherans got down from what was later to be Germany to South Australia, they founded various settlements in South Australia, the colony of South Australia.

Actually, we had this unfortunate situation that, after we lost a little bit of land over here-- it's something to do with independence or something-- we had nowhere to dump our prisoners, so we went and got Australia. But the one colony where prisoners were not allowed was South Australia, and that was the place where they gave out land grants. Excuse me just a sec.

[LIQUID SLOSHING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: Very nice.

ANDREW JONES: Not quite as well-chilled as it should be. I shall have to have a word with my road manager, Manly Stanley. The ice bucket was just a little too warm. But no, that's not possible, is it? Just the neck of the bottle. That's a good tip, actually, to let people know. Neck of the bottle always comes out of the ice. So if you are the host and you're drinking, it is good manners, politesse, to pour the first glass for yourself so that you've got that that's not quite at the right temperature, and then you honor your guests by pouring the second, third, and so on like that.

But just going back to South Australia, a young man called Johann Gramp, who came from Bavaria, went to work as a laborer on the building of the city of Adelaide. And we're talking about 1837. And when he heard 10 years later that a Pastor Kavel, from Brandenburg in what's today's Poland, had actually arrived in South Australia and gone to the Barossa Valley to form a settlement called Bethany, he went to see him, went with his young wife and child.

And they found that the Lutherans there had planted just a few rows of vines in order to have wine for sacramental needs. And he saw that in the luscious microclimate of South Australia, that those grapes had ripened absolutely perfectly. And he said, well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get myself a land grant, because land grants were available, and the nearest place he could get one was one and a half miles away alongside a little stream called Jacob's Creek.

Now, it was called Jacob's Creek because not a very humble man, a man who was the land surveyor, assistant land surveyor to the government there, was called William Jacob, and he wanted to be remembered for posterity. Little did he realize that by naming his favorite little spot and stream after him, he'd be seen on wine labels around the world a century and a half later. And so in 1847, Johann Gramp planted the first four acres of 400. He got a land grant alongside this little stream, Jacob's Creek in the Barossa Valley, and started that first winery in the Barossa Valley in South Australia.

Now, the point is that if you or I went to the Napa Valley today and said-- maybe we'd won a state lottery or something-- we're going to invest $50,000 an acre before we start planting. So therefore, there's an unfair advantage for the successors of Jacob's Creek because they got the land for nothing, and they don't have that capital cost.

But the other thing is the difference in the style of wine. Because the Napa people-- and they make wonderful wines-- because they've got a high capital cost in the first place, and they're going to start off selling $15 wines or so on, they therefore need to make really stylish, long-lasting wines, so they use new oak barrels for oak aging. New oak barrels can be $400 or $500 each, and they may have to have thousands of them. So again, the cost keeps going up. Whereas what I've poured for you is what we call bottled sunshine. Very simple, no oak aging involved. And it's about $6.95.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, I was going to ask you, why are Australian wines so cheap? Because you can get it easily for $6.95, and I've found some wonderful wines from Australia. There's Shiraz.

ANDREW JONES: Well, Shiraz is a very good example. It surprised me a little bit that Shiraz hasn't been taken on more in the United States, because it's clearly something that would grow in the climate in California and Oregon and Washington State, and in certain other vineyards. Texas has got some exciting wines now.

If you get sufficient sunshine, you really can produce really exciting things with, of course, the right varieties being chosen. That's one of the problems in Minnesota for the few wineries here, that people tend to be using hybrids or labrusca varieties and not using the real thing, the noble varieties. And they do it to be safety-first and to get a crop, but they're never going to produce exciting results as a result of that. Stick to beer. You've got some wonderful beers here. Wonderful beers.

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) Right. We have a few minutes to take questions from you. Andrew Jones here, the Flying Wine Man. And I have to ask you how you got that title, but let me give the phone numbers out first. 227-6000 if you have some questions about what kind of wine to serve, and maybe some good deals on wines, too. 1-800-242-2828 is the number from outside the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Flying Wine Man. Where did that come from?

ANDREW JONES: Oh, come on, Paula. You can't swim all the way from England.

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) OK. So you fly all over.

ANDREW JONES: No, I fly all over the world researching the history, the romance, and the characters for wineries and drinks companies. I have a book that hopefully will come out in the States, we think about the end of next year, called The Stories Behind the Labels, which is already out in Britain. And it's a coffee table book which has got 270 stories of wines and drinks from all over the world, and that I've researched, taking about 14 years to do it. Incidentally, I think your listeners really would like some latest up-to-the-minute news, background, you know--

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's what we're here for.

ANDREW JONES: --on the royal family, because I'm sure that the quality of listener you've got spends a lot of time reading your great American classic publications like The National Enquirer and keep up with them. But no, seriously, Princess Di gets her say tonight on BBC television, which has caused a bit of astonishment.

And I've been in a very privileged position to have some little connection with the royals, and the situation now is you have to choose between the House of Windsor and the House of Spencer. But any man would realize straight away there doesn't come much difficulty in making a decision like that. Just look at them.

But no, I've actually brought you along-- I don't think we'll pour it on the program. It's really because I'm being mean. It's the only bottle I've got, and I need to hang on to it. But I've got here Prince Charles's choice, personal choice, of single malt whisky called Laphroaig, which comes from the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland, a single Islay malt.

And it's a 10-year-old malt. And you can see on the back label, there are the Prince of Wales feathers. And it actually says, "By appointment to HRH the Prince of Wales, distiller and supplier of single malt scotch whisky, D. Johnson and Company, Laphroaig." But you know--

PAULA SCHROEDER: I've never seen it. Not that I spend a lot of time in the Scotch aisle, frankly, at the liquor store. But is it available in the United States?

ANDREW JONES: Oh, it is. It's widely available. And it's now, I think, about the fifth or sixth bestselling of the single malts. It is the most aromatic, most pungent, most full-flavored of all. Because you see, the malted barley is dried over peat fires, and the peat impregnates the malted barley, leaving a very strong aroma. But after that, they actually age it in a warehouse on the beach, and I mean on the beach, so that high tide twice a day washes up against the wall.

Now, what happens is if you go to Jack Daniel's or George Dickel down in Tennessee, or Jim Beam or someone else in Kentucky, in those balmy atmosphere there, what happens is you get the evaporation, sometimes as much as 4% per annum they lose. And you see, if you lose atmosphere, it has to be replaced by something else. And the air outside is taken into the whisky, and it helps to really create the flavor.

Now, if you do it alongside the beach, you can imagine what happens. The iodine from the sea gets taken in and impregnates the whisky and gives a real iodine nose to it. Quite an astonishing flavor. And last time I overheard Prince Charles in talking about it, and he said, it's really wonderful, this Laphroig. After three glasses, Camilla looks even more beautiful.

PAULA SCHROEDER: [LAUGHS] Well, OK, you were billed as the world's worst impressionist.

ANDREW JONES: Well, I live up to my reputation, don't I?

PAULA SCHROEDER: (LAUGHING) That's right. We have a caller on the line. Becky is calling from Minneapolis. Hi, Becky.

BECKY: Hi. I'm interested in any organically grown wine from Australia.

ANDREW JONES: Well, Becky, I have to tell you, I haven't found one yet that I could recommend. People are still just at very, very early stages. But the big, big problem is we need some kind of coordination of official bodies to say what an organic wine is. I've been in Californian vineyards and people say, oh, this is organic, you know.

And I say, but hang on. I say, do you use sulfur dioxide? Oh, well, of course we do. We've got to use that in cleaning the vats, the fermentation vats. And we've got to put a little whiff of it between the cork and the wine. But they say, but everything else in the vineyard, we don't spray it with anything. I said, well, come on, that really doesn't quite qualify to be organic. And the same thing applies in France, and the same thing applies in South Africa.

And I can honestly say I couldn't put my hand on my heart and recommend something as being organic, saying it's truly organic. It just hasn't occurred. Fetzer in California are beginning to get near to that stage with some of their wines. Valley Oaks, I think they're called. But even they you need to be asking, are they using sulfur dioxide?

And at the same time, do remember that of all the wines, all the greatest wines in the world, Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Chateau Latour, Chateau Pétrus, great things like Stag's Leap, Caymus Cellars from Napa, all of them have sulfur dioxide in them, or sulfites, as you call it in this country. And frankly, it's nothing to worry about for 96% of the population. But there's, unfortunately, just a tiny few people who do get affected. And the real answer is they've got to stop drinking wine. It's sad, but that's that.

PAULA SCHROEDER: 16 minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News station. I'm Paula Schroeder here with Andrew Jones, who is a wine expert extraordinaire. We are going to have a very blustery day across the state of Minnesota today, with high temperatures only getting up into the upper 20s to around 40 in the southeastern part of the state, and strong northwesterly winds at 20 to 35. That's bringing winter to us here, Andrew. It is now 35 degrees in the Twin Cities. 227-6000, the number to call in the Twin Cities. 1-800-242-2828 outside the metropolitan area. Christian from St. Paul, good morning to you.

CHRISTIAN: Hi. Yeah, my question was about aging wines, which is, I guess, part of the romance of having wines. But there's been a lot of talk lately that a lot of the good wineries, and I'm thinking of the California wineries, are filtering their wines so much now that they're basically ready to drink, and that there's not much to the aging of wines. And I was wondering if you could comment on that?

ANDREW JONES: Well, I think in general terms I can give you an answer. 90% of the wines, I would say, are produced with a lot of filtration. And you're quite right, they're produced in a style that's ready to drink straight away. In very crude terms, you can talk about up to $15 or $16, that almost all wines are going to be ready for drinking straight away, and then you move above that mark and gradually you develop to where 90% of them do need aging.

But from California, I'll give you a few little names that you could actually lay down. Caymus, of course, but look for Caymus Special Selection. Absolutely superb wine, and will age 15, 20 years. Then you've got, of course, the one with the longest proven record, which is Beaulieu Vineyards' Georges de Latour Private Reserve. That's the only American wine you can go back 50 years and look at the quality of the wines and how well they've aged and so on. And it's a very fine record that you could put virtually up to first-growth Bordeaux standards.

Stag's Leap, of course, have one or two. Not the standard Stag's Leap. You have to look for the reserve wines, and that's often a clue. Look for reserve wines and read the back label, and if they say they've been aging in oak for 18 months, then you know with that length of time they need a fair duration before they're going to come around.

But of course, I know you want to be proud and patriotic as an American, but don't forget some of the wines of Bordeaux as well. Because they are great, great values. I know we've not been spoiled during the last few years with the best vintages. We have that wonderful run of '88, '89, and '90, and now the years since have been a little bit disappointing. Some of the '94s are not bad at all. But wait to see what the wine writers say about '95. That's just a little hint I'm saying, because you can't quite tell at this stage, but it looks very promising. That's all I'm going to say.

But if it is, if I'm right and it is really good, then the best value to buy are the chateaux called Cru Bourgeois. They're not the grand Cru Classés. They're not the little unknown chateaux. But look out for names like Chateau Greysac, Chateau-- very strange one-- Chasse-Spleen. Another one off the top of my head is Sociando-Mallet. Remember the word mallet, like somebody used a big hammer, is the last part of that word. Those are three that are consistently fine values and will age perfectly well for up to 10 years.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Let's go to the extreme other end, because I mentioned Beaujolais at the beginning of our program here, and they're out now. This is a good time to get Beaujolais, right?

ANDREW JONES: Have you got any shoes that need cleaning?

PAULA SCHROEDER: [LAUGHS] Uh-oh. You're not a fan of Beaujolais?

ANDREW JONES: I tasted in London last week a whole variety of Beaujolais nouveau. And as ever, the publicity from France said exceptional vintage Beaujolais nouveau. And I thought, well, what happened to the wine, though? No, no. It's a fun wine. It's a party wine. It's for messing about. I'm being a little bit facetious. But really, it is just a fun wine. If you're going to be serious about wine, you're not going to take too much fun doing it. I once was a judge in the annual Beaujolais appellation controlée tasting competition, and we tasted our way through, I think it was 120. And goodness me--

PAULA SCHROEDER: I hope you spit.

ANDREW JONES: Well, everybody but one man did. There were five judges. One was the négociant, the merchant. The next one was a proprietor. Next one was an artisan who provided a filtration and bottling service. Then I was there for the press. And there was one man who didn't spit. He drank all 120. And I said, what's your role? He said, (FRENCH ACCENT) monsieur, je suis le consommateur. I'm the consumer. I have drunk more than 30,000 bottles of Beaujolais in 25 years. Come on. Come with me to the bar. We will drink another. And that's a true story.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Oh my gosh.

ANDREW JONES: But last night, we were up in the Minneapolis Marriott City Center and wanted to eat in Gastineau's restaurant, which has got a very good reputation. Unfortunately it was closed, but we went into another smaller restaurant there, which is called Papayas. And I was very pleased to see what was being done downtown here, offering selections of wine by the glass with dishes and recommending.

And we had a Beau Tour-- this word beau keeps on cropping up all the time, but Beau Tour Chardonnay from California. As a young wine, I had it with a delightful swordfish steak, and very reasonably priced by the glass. Where the best message lies for discovering wine when you're out eating is keep on experimenting, and always ask the waitstaff if they've got any other selections by the glass that may not have been named.

These days, because of the winekeeping apparatus we have, some of the nitrogen systems and the Vacu Vin Wine Saver pump and so on, the wine stays fresh and there's no excuse for it going off, for oxidizing at all. But if you go to a place like the Minneapolis Marriott and go into the restaurants there, you can get a wonderful selection of wines by the glass and experiment. And do that wherever you go. It's not necessary to spend a fortune to have really good wine.

You know, my little experience with the British royal family, it's absolutely true to say that the Queen has Sandeman sherry. And I'm talking about $10 a bottle. I know she's got a reputation as a mean-- I mustn't say that, must I? She's very careful with her money. But she has a little committee to get her the best value for money.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, makes sense to me. We've got just a couple of minutes left and I want to get to Ross, who's calling from his car in Burnsville. Hi, Ross.

ROSS: Hi. Yeah, I just have a quick question regarding the effect that wine has. Generally, I have always had wine, a glass of wine at lunch with customers occasionally, and I inevitably get a headache from it, be it white wine or red wine. But when I dine out and we're in an oriental restaurant, and I have plum wine, that doesn't affect me and I don't have that problem. Is there something different in the way that those wines are made, and that would account for that difference?

ANDREW JONES: Now, Ross, you're a unique case. You're a unusual case, indeed. And no, basically, there isn't in the structure of the winemaking, or there shouldn't be. One of the things, of course, is lunchtime drinking. You've got to be careful. And I'm wondering whether you were eating at the same time, or whether you were just taking it as an aperitif before you had any food.

ROSS: It was with food. [CHUCKLES]

ANDREW JONES: With food. Had you drunk before you started eating or not?

ROSS: No, no.

ANDREW JONES: No. OK. No, it sounds to me like you're a bit of a freak individual. I don't mean to be rude to you, but I think the only thing you can do is experiment with different styles of wine. It does happen to some people, that they find they can't get on with red wines, and they can only get on with champagne or sparkling wines. But try across the ranges to see what suits you. And if it doesn't work out well, then you'll just have to stick into some of this wonderful Minnesota microbrew beer.

PAULA SCHROEDER: 15 seconds. What's the wine to serve with Thanksgiving dinner?

ANDREW JONES: I think if you've got all the family, you've got 10 or 12 people there, don't just have your own favorite. Have a range of wines of different tastes. Something dry, something semi, something red, something sweet, something sparkling, a couple of bottles of each. Don't try and finish them all off. And drink them when you're eating. You get much more enjoyment of wine with food.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Andrew Jones, thank you so very much for coming in today. It's been fascinating.

ANDREW JONES: Thank you very much.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Andrew Jones, the Flying Wine Man, here on Midmorning at seven minutes before 11 o'clock.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

GARY EICHTEN: For weeks now, the Bosnians, the Serbs, the Croatians have been meeting in Dayton, Ohio, trying to end the war in Bosnia. Hi, Gary Eichten here inviting you to join us for Midday on the FM News station. We'll take a closer look at the prospects for a real peace in Bosnia and what role the US might play in implementing that peace. Nick Hayes will be here to share his expertise. I hope you can tune in and call in. Midday begins weekday mornings at 11:00 on the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's what my grandmother said, too. And coming up during the first hour of Midmorning, host Gary Eichten will be talking to former Minnesota Congressman Bill Frenzel about the nature of the budget agreement reached in Washington late last night. Also Les Bolstad, junior of Principal Financial, will give a primer on the Dow, the NASDAQ, and what it all means now that we've reached new heights. That's coming up after we hear from Garrison Keillor.

[GENTLE MUSIC]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is The Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 20th of November, 1995. It's the birthday of the Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf, born in Marbacka, Sweden, 1858 on this day. The author of Gosta Berling's Saga and Jerusalem and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and many, many other books.

It's the birthday of Edwin Powell Hubble, the astronomer born in Marshfield, Missouri, 1889. After World War I, he settled down to work at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, where he made phenomenal discoveries about the galaxies. First of all, that not all nebulae were part of the Milky Way, and that there are galaxies distinct from it, that the universe has been expanding at a constant rate for 10 to 20 billion years.

It's the birthday of Chester Gould in Pawnee, Oklahoma, 1900, the creator of Dick Tracy. Alfred Alistair Cooke, born in Manchester, England, 1908, the journalist who for a half a century did his Letter from America for the BBC. It's the birthday of the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer, born in 1923, in a little gold-mining town just about 30 miles from Johannesburg. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

And it was on this day in 1944 in London, after five years of wartime blackout, Piccadilly Circus and the Strand, the theater district of London, was ablaze with light for the first time.

Here's a poem by Stephen Dunn entitled, "Kindness."

"In Manhattan, I learned a public kindness was a triumph over the push of money, the constrictions of fear. If it occurred, it came from some deep, primal memory, almost entirely lost. Here, let me help you, then you me. Otherwise, we'll die. Which is why I love the weather in Minnesota, every winter kindness linked to obvious self-interest, thus so many kindnesses when you need them. Praise blizzards, praise the cold.

Kindness of any kind shames me, makes me remember what I haven't done or been. I met a woman this summer in Aspen. So kind. I kept testing her to see where it would end. I thought, how easy to be kind in Aspen. No poverty or crime, each day a cruise in the blonde, expensive streets.

But I was proof it wasn't easy. There was an end to her kindness, and I found it. I kept wanting what she didn't have until she gave me what I deserved. If the hearts of men are merciless, as James Wright said, then any kindness is water turned to wine. It's manna in the new and populous desert. The stranger in me knows what strangers need. It might be better to turn us away."

A poem entitled "Kindness," by Stephen Dunn from his New and Selected Poems, published by WW Norton and Company and used by permission here on The Writer's Almanac, Monday, November 20th. Made possible by Cowles Magazines, publishers of Southwest Art and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That's Midmorning for this Monday. Thanks a lot for joining us today. I'm Paula Schroeder. Coming up tomorrow, we are going to be talking about the growing wage gap. There's been a lot said about the income disparity in this country. John Schmitt, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, will be with us to help discuss that issue.

We're also going to be talking with Lynn Rossetto Kasper, who is a chef extraordinaire, and she's going to give us some tips on how to cook a turkey and other things for Thanksgiving dinner. That's all coming up tomorrow on Midmorning beginning at 9:00. Join us then. Stay tuned. Midday is coming up next.

[CHEERFUL MUSIC]

SPEAKER 5: This year, give the gift they won't return-- a gift certificate from the Public Radio Music Source. 1-800-75-MUSIC.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 35 degrees under cloudy skies at the FM News station, KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis-St. Paul. There's a wind advisory in effect for today. We're expecting westerly winds at 20 to 35 miles per hour, switching to the northwest this afternoon.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock and this is Midday on the FM News station. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, an announcement is now expected this afternoon on whether there'll be peace in Bosnia. The US has set today as the deadline for the warring parties to reach an agreement at the peace talks in Dayton, Ohio. An announcement scheduled for 9 o'clock this morning was delayed.

Government workers are back at work today, following an agreement reached late yesterday between the president and the Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, says Republicans may be willing to scale back their $245 billion tax cut package to help balance the budget. The Dow finally crossed the 5,000 mark today, the first time in history that index has ever been so high. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the shuttle is landing in Florida.

Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, we'll take a closer look at the prospects for peace in Bosnia. We'll be joined by Nick Hayes, and we'll be opening the phone line for your questions and comments.